The present invention relates to computer systems and, more particularly, to techniques for delivering non-default items in association with search results.
The Internet, often simply called xe2x80x9cthe Net,xe2x80x9d is a worldwide system of computer networks and, in a larger sense, the people using it. The Internet is a public, self-sustaining facility that is accessible to tens of millions of people worldwide. The most widely used part of the Internet is the World Wide Web, often abbreviated xe2x80x9cWWWxe2x80x9d or simply referred to as just xe2x80x9cthe Webxe2x80x9d. The Web is an Internet service that organizes information through the use of hypermedia. The HyperText Markup Language (xe2x80x9cHTMLxe2x80x9d) is used to specify the contents and format of a hypermedia document (e.g., a Web page).
In this context, an HTML file is a file that contains the source code for a particular Web page. A Web page is the image that is displayed to a user when a particular HTML file is rendered by a browser application program. Unless specifically stated, an electronic or Web document may refer to either the source code for a particular Web page or the Web page itself.
Each page can contain imbedded references to images, audio, or other Web documents. A user, using a Web browser, browses for information by following references, known as hyperlinks, that are embedded in each of the documents. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (xe2x80x9cHTTPxe2x80x9d) is the protocol used to access a Web document.
Through the use of the Web, individuals have access to millions of pages of information. However a significant drawback with using the Web is that because there is so little organization to the Web, at times it can be extremely difficult for users to locate the particular pages that contain the information that is of interest to them.
To address this problem, a mechanism known as a xe2x80x9csearch enginexe2x80x9d has been developed to index a large number of Web pages and to provide an interface that can be used to search the indexed information by entering certain words or phases to be queried. Indexes are conceptually similar to the normal indexes that are typically found at the end of a book, in that both kinds of indexes comprise an ordered list of information accompanied with the location of the information. Values in one or more columns of a table are stored in an index, which is maintained separately from the actual database table. An xe2x80x9cindex word setxe2x80x9d of a document is the set of words that are mapped to the document in an index. For documents that are not indexed, the index word set is empty.
Although there are many popular Internet search engines, they are generally constructed using the same three common parts. First, each search engine has at least one xe2x80x9cspiderxe2x80x9d that xe2x80x9ccrawlsxe2x80x9d across the Internet to locate Web documents around the world. Upon locating a document, the spider stores the document""s Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and follows any hyperlinks associated with the document to locate other Web documents. Second, each search engine contains an indexing mechanism that indexes certain information about the documents that were located by the spider. In general, index information is generated based on the contents of the HTML file. The indexing mechanism stores the index information in large databases that can typically hold an enormous amount of information. Third, each search engine provides a search tool that allows users to search the databases in order to locate specific documents that contain information that is of interest to them.
The search engine provides an interface that allows users to specify their search criteria and, after performing a search, an interface for displaying the search results. Typically, the search engine orders the search results prior to presenting the search results interface to the user. The order usually takes the form of a xe2x80x9crankingxe2x80x9d, where the document with the highest ranking is the document considered most likely to satisfy the interest reflected in the search criteria specified by the user. The specific techniques for determining that ranking will vary from implementation to implementation, and the present invention is not limited to any particular ranking technique.
Once the matching documents have been determined, and the display order of those documents has been determined, the search engine sends to the user that issued the search a xe2x80x9csearch results pagexe2x80x9d that presents information about the matching documents in the selected display order. Typically, number of documents that match a search is so large that the user is presented with a search results page that only displays information about the top N ranking documents, where N may be significantly smaller than the total number of matching documents. The search results page typically includes a control that allows the user to retrieve information about the xe2x80x9cnext Nxe2x80x9d matching documents, in case the first N matching documents do not entirely satisfy the users interest.
Significantly, the search results pages do not present to users the matching documents themselves, but merely data that identifies the matching documents. The data presented by the search results page for any given matching page is referred to herein as the xe2x80x9csearch result listingxe2x80x9d for the page. The search result listings that are presented by the search results page frequently take the form of text that has been extracted from the documents themselves. For example, search results may present the xe2x80x9ctitlexe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cabstractxe2x80x9d of each matching web page, where the title and abstract consist of text extracted from corresponding meta-data fields within the web pages. Typically, each search result listing is presented in the form of a hypertext link which, when selected, causes the user""s browser to retrieve the corresponding matching document.
Currently, within a given search results page, there is little beyond display order and text description to distinguish one page""s search result listing from the search result listing of other web pages. For example, the search result listing for each document is typically all text, where the amount of text cannot exceed a certain limit, and where the text of all entries has the same default attributes (e.g. the same font, the same font size, the same color, etc.) The default text attributes that apply to search result listings are dictated by the search result page, the settings of the browser in which the web page is displayed, or both.
The success of a company can hinge on the frequency at which a company""s web page is selected as a matching web page by a popular search engine, and the frequency at which the web page is selected from the search results page on which it is presented. For example, a company that sells chocolates over the Internet is likely to fail if its web page does not match a search that uses the terms xe2x80x9cbuy chocolatexe2x80x9d, or if users fail to select the web page when it is listed in the search results. Due to the commercial importance of having search engine users locate and select a company""s web page, some web page owners go so far as to stuff their web pages with non-displayed content that is intended to ensure that their pages match popular searches and receive high rankings among the search results.
Based on the foregoing, it is clearly desirable to provide techniques that allow web page owners to entice search engine users to select the search result listings associated with their web pages without employing artifices for artificially increasing the search rank assigned to their web pages.
Techniques are provided for delivering search results pages to the users of a search engine, where one or more search result listings on the search results pages include items that are not included by default. The non-default items may take many forms, including but not limited to images, banners, controls, animations, and even applets in the JAVA language. The non-default items may be designed to entice the search engine users to select the search result listing with which they are associated over possibly higher-ranked search result listings that contain only default items.